More Drilling in America Issue is Silly

[NJ5]

 

TheRealMafoo said:

I hate that statistic. No one tells us how much 25% is, and how much 2% is. if 25% of the worlds consumption is only half a percent of the oil reserves, then we have 4 times as much oil then we need.

Those two statistics alone mean nothing.

I've been reading a lot about oil lately, so I think I can give some useful information.

The world consumes approximately 80-85 million barrels per day, the US consumes about 20 million barrels per day.

US proven reserves are 21 billion barrels, enough for about 3 years of consumption. The estimate of undiscovered resources is 134 billion barrels, enouh for 18 years of consumption (but this is an estimate).

However, there's a big problem those naive calculations don't show. USA's production rates can't keep up with daily consumption. The USA produces around 5 million barrels per day right now, and it's not due to output throttling. Production falls every day because oil extraction slows down as the oil fields deplete. This means more and more imports are necessary to satisfy consumption.

Now for the interesting stuff:

Obviously, more drilling can theoretically help to contain or reverse this decline in production. The problem is that it takes a long time (many years) to start up production in non-explored areas. For example:

In May 2008 the EIA used this assessment to estimate the potential cumulative production of the 1002 area of ANWR to be a maximum of 4.3 billion barrels from 2018 to 2030. This estimate is a best case scenario of technically recoverable oil during the area's primary production years if legislation were passed in 2008 to allow drilling. ^[12]

Quick math: 4.3 billion barrels in 12 years means less than 1 million barrels per day. This is a best case scenario.

The EIA found that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf of Mexico regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil production or prices before 2030. Total domestic production of crude oil from 2012 through 2030 is projected to be 1.6 percent higher than in EIA's "no access" reference case.

Conclusion: The USA isn't going to be independent from oil imports for the foreseeable future. If someone tells you otherwise, ask them how they're going to eliminate or replace 15 million barrels of daily oil imports.

Here are some good articles which provide references to more authorative sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_depletion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_Oil
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4621
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_Reserves_in_the_United_States